Endless Pantheon: God's Heart
by Todeswind
Summary: There has been a murder on Mt. Olympus. Harry Dresden is hired by Hades to solve his brother's murder and clear Poseidon's name. Unfortunately for Harry, at a gathering of Goa'uld murder is the least of his worries.
1. Chapter 1

I don't remember exactly when I stopped sleeping. It wasn't like there was a day where I went "huh - I wonder if I don't need to do this anymore?" It was more that I just got so engrossed in my work that it wasn't until a week later that it occured to me that I hadn't eaten, drank, or slept.

It just hadn't felt important. It apparently hadn't been important.

Even when I tried to sleep it was just too loud to truly enjoy the act. There were too many voices at once. I couldn't even close my eyes without hearing the prayers of countless billions of people. It was just too loud. Hell, I don't know if I'd even noticed the different memories of my past self since the last time I was on Earth unless I made the conscious effort to parse them out from the rest.

It wasn't a pleasant process. I had to go through so many different people begging - pleading - for someone to save them from the horrors in their lives. And even with al my power - the ability to summon myself to where they were - I was still just one man. I couldn't be everywhere at once, even I might wish it.

I could summon myself across galaxies in a moments - appearing as a skeletal nightmare cloaked in black fire and raining doom upon my enemies with sword and sorcery. But only one planet at a time, I could only answer a single prayer at a time.

I did, however, have armies, bureaucrats, and servants. So, even though it hurt every time I did it, I forced myself not to just appear everywhere at once. I listened, I recorded, and I sent people to help where I could. A more petty or selfish person might have suggested that I was using the pain of the people praying for me to help direct the flow of my war. But that wasn't true, I was just sending troops to save my people.

Honestly… I was just helping. Stars and stone, maybe I'd even believe that someday.

I was sorting through the endless waves of misery when I felt a weight upon my chest and groin, the steady cool pressure of a body upon my own. I bit back the feeling of blind rage at being interrupted for what was doubtlessly another young woman looking to woo the God King of Nekheb. The more I firmly asserted that I entirely wasn't interest in bedding some woman who saw me as a divine being, the more creative they seemed to get at trying to bed me.

Even Amun - with his seemingly supernatural ability to manage my household - wasn't up to the task of keeping them out of my room. I was half convinced the Jaffa were just letting them in because they found it funny, even if I knew that they'd never willingly allow someone to trespass in my quarters without my permission. Even so, it seemed like I was breaking the heart of some starry eyed teenager twice a week these days. I was breaking the hearts of young men nearly twice as much. And even once, befuddlingly, an Unas.

"You are not supposed to be here." I grumbled, not opening my eyes as I reached up to push the woman off me. When I pressed against the cool flesh, however, the woman didn't budge even against my enhanced strength. I pressed harder and she still didn't move.

Uh oh, uh… that didn't bode well. Especially because I could feel small motes of frost forming under the woman's weight. I reflexively clenched my hand out of fear, clutching the woman's small breast and eliciting a purr of ecstacy from her as she said, "Oh my, beloved… we are being forward, aren't we?"

"Lady Maeve," My eyes snapped open as I tried and failed to extricate myself from under the Winter Lady.

She giggled madly as I wriggled under her, her face and… well her everything turning a darker shade of pale blue as she managed to full body blush at the sudden friction. She had forgone her usual club-wear in lieu of the absence of anything at all, except for an elaborate pattern of gemstones stuck to her skin that ran along her face, arms, body legs, breasts and… other places - distracting places.

I supressed my inner caveman who was VERY ok with how things were developing in lieu of eveything else about me that was going full on "danger Will Robinson." Damn it - she wasn't supposed to be here. "I thought your mother forbid you from coming here."

"She did, then she reconsidered. She is fae. We do that on occasion." Maeve pushed my arms down on either side of me, holding them down as she whispered into my ear in a way that sent a chill of primal desire up my spine. "I had to make many promises to see you, beloved. Do you not feel special? Do you not feel loved?"

I felt terrified. Maeve was, charitably, psychotic. She was the sort of woman who thought that watching the Winter Knight rape someone was great fun and exchanged sex for the right to someone's first born child. Even as a god she was the sort of person you didn't knock boots with if you planned on living through it. Unfortunately, she also wasn't the sort of person whose advances got spurned without some serious consequences.

"Is that why you're here Maeve?" I replied in as neutral of a voice as I could manage with a naked Queen of Winter grinding against my hips. "To show me you love me?"

"Oh, Harry, I could show you things you've never dreamed were possible. And with your new body, you might even survive them." She purred into my ear as my blood ran colder than her breath. She chuckled as she flelt my body go taught under her. "Oh yes, Dresden. I know who you are. I am a Queen of Winter. Even if Mother chooses not to share information with me, I have my sources."

"What do you want, Maeve?" I asked, unable to entirely modulate the fear from my voice.

"I want to help you, Beloved." Maeve kissed my cheek, rolling off my chest to the ground. She knelt down at the waist in a way that couldn't possibly have been an accident, turning her back to me as she picked up my cloak from the ground. "I want you to prosper."

I took the grey cape and stole from her, wrapping them around myself as I stood up from my bed. "You'll pardon me if I'm not convinced."

"I give you my word that you will come to no harm for the duration of this conversation and that I will return you to your room, safe, sane, unharmed and unaltered." The Winter Lady snapped her fingers and a glamor climbed across her flesh, a blue bikini, black cargo pants, and thick black combat boots appearing from nothing. "But it is in your best interest to speak with me, Beloved. Or all that you have built may crumble in moments."

"And why should I believe that, Lady Maeve?" I replied, picking up my staff and scabbard from my dresser. "I am not inclined to trust the calculated truth of the Fae any more than the lies of men."

"Chronos is dead, Lord Warden." Maeve snapped her fingers, opening a portal to the Nevernever. "Mother's side of your bargain has been met. You bargained for the armies of Winter to help defeat the Force of Chronos. Chronos is dead. His forces are no longer his own, even if their war is still yours."

"Dead… how?" I groaned, realizing the obvious answer. "No, don't tell me. SG-1?"

"They are fantastically good at killing Goa'uld." Maeve purred. "I shall have to do something nice for them. I owed Chronos a violent death for his actions and Djer's Lament."

"How quickly does Mab plan to remove her forces?" I groaned - I was relying on those troops. Those armies were vital to keeping up the offensive against much larger armies. Mab's paths through the Nevernever were crucial in keeping my armies resupplied and allowing smaller forces to cover a significantly larger part of the Galaxy than they otherwise ought to have been able.

"Mother is amused by your war and would not deny her subordinates the carnage they were promised. I have negotiated for an extension of your deal until you complete a favor for an associate to whom I owe a favor." Maeve gestured to her portal. "One with sufficient clout to bribe Mother and knowledge of you to desire your specific assistance."

"I don't like being blackmailed, Maeve." I wrapped my Kara'kesh around my hand pushing my fingers through tallon tipped ends.

"I could tell Mother that you've elected to reject my kindness, Beloved, but I think she might take offense to that." Maeve caressed her neck in apparent ecstacy. "Oh… that would be such glorious violence. She would be so angry. She might even attack the armies that believed they were safe."

"Where does that lead?" I looked at the portal.

"Your Godmother's fortress on the other side." Maeve sighed. "Even I am unable to travel as far as we're going in a single trip. She has consented to arrange our travel."

Of course Lea was involved in this. "Fine. Let's get this over with."

I walked through the portal and into the courtyard of a massive structure on in the Nevernever. The first thing I noticed was the sheer size of this place. It was easily as large as Buyan, complete with the spindly spires and struts shooting up into the skies. Stars and stone, it wasn't just the size of Buyan. It was practically a carbon copy of it - just made out of stone rather than the cool, grey metal that covered all of the flying city and aged by so many years that the hard lines and angles of the architecture of Eden had been worn away by time and battle. The spires and walls had eroded to the point that they looked more like natural features than man-made structures.

The second thing I realized was that this place was under siege. I looked out from the open window and out across a roiling sea of black before I realized that I wasn't looking at a torment of water. I was looking at bodies - thousands of them. They were misshapen, horrible things with no sense of symmetry or order to them. I felt my knees shaking as I steadied myself on my staff. "Are… are those…"

"Outsiders?" Maeve looked out the window, purring in amusement. "Yes - perhaps now you understand a measure of how angry your Godmother must have been when you decided to make your home on Nekheb? You accidentally obligated her to retake one of the fortresses between us and the Inner Gates."

"Inner Gates?" I shook my head. "Don't you mean the Outer Gates… hell even those are just a metaphor."

"Oh no, Child, they're very real." Spoke the educated voice of my godmother as she entered the room. Her flowing red hair draped across a heavy suit of armor that seemed to be made of interwoven links of obsidian tipped with blue diamonds. Her armor was drenched with dark blood, dripping down on the ground. "Though I will admit that even I have never seen the inner gates. The Goa'uld pushed back as far as the Third of the Inner Gates before their efforts turned to their destruction, to my knowledge I am the first to have succeeded in reclaiming this much territory from the Adversary to date."

She pointed out another window, at a looming shape in the distance. "The wall and Outer Gates are that way if you feel inclined to fight your way back to them."

"I'm in the Outside." I all but screeched.

"Don't be daft, child." My godmother scoffed, sidling over to a stone throne in the style of the People of Eden and sitting on it so her legs dangled over the arm of it. "You wouldn't survive that, even as you are now. No, child, we are merely in the space between the penultimate and final gates between us and the home of the Adversary. There are others on the wall, armies of Winter fighting the creatures of the Outside"

"Oh… goodie." I looked out at the battle raging on the fortress walls. I could just barely make out the shapes of Sidhe warriors and creatures battling the monstrous outsider beasts. "Godmother… how long has this been going on?"

"Always." Lea replied, looking up at the ceiling, at the cracked glass patterns in the ceiling. There were shattered pieces of it along the ground from where some creature ripped it to shreds ages ago. "The war has always been and if we're lucky it always will."

"Do you need help?" I looked out at that roiling mass of monsters. "Troops? Ships?"

My godmother chortled, ficking a tear of mirth from the edge of her eye with glib amusement. She hiccuped with joy as she said, "Oh, Child - are you not stretched thin enough that you can't afford to open yet another war? This war is not yours yet child."

"Fuck that, this war opens into my bedroom." I pointed to where Maeve had opened the Way. "I'm in favor of having a metric ton more troops here."

"Lets perhaps get through the morning without reliving the Folly of Thoth's start, Beloved." Maeve chuckled in dark amusement.

"Ah… yes… that… yes." I had briefly forgot why we'd come in the first place. "Uh, so where are we going next?"

"To meet your contemporary, child." Lea looked at the elaborate silk clothing and jewlery beneath my heavy, grey cloak. She puffed her lip in disappointment. "I had hoped to indulge in properly dressing you for the occasion, but a life as Royalty seems to have improved your taste."

"Uh… Amun… dressed me." I admitted. "I wanted to wear jeans. I had them specially commissioned from one of the Industrial Age planets we found. He hid them and won't tell me where they are."

"Then at least one of you has sense." Lea snorted, gesturing to another wall to open a Way. "Go along and have your meeting. He will be waiting for you, I suspect."

"Who am I meeting, exactly?" I asked, looking warily at the Way. I didn't love the idea of a place so far away from Nekheb that I had to go through the edge of the Outside to get there.

"You'll see when you get there but he has requested a private meeting." Maeve leaned against the wall. "I will wait here till you complete your business."

"This is increasingly feeling like a trap." I replied dryly.

Maeve shrugged unconcernedly. "Paranoia is one of your more admirable qualities, Beloved but he has promised the same pledge of safety that I did. You are in no immediate danger."

"How immediate?" I groaned.

"At least till you get back to your bedroom." Maeve played idly with a dreadlock. "Given the price he paid - I doubt that he's asking for anything less that Herculean efforts."

"It's for your people," I reminded myself. "I'm doing this for my people."

I blinked at the sudden brightness of the world around me as I walked through the Way. The pure, white sands of the beach were warm against my toes as I stared out across a seemingly endless sea of blue water with white foam. Gulls cried out cheery sounds as they looked for food. I looked around and tried to place the location in my memory. I'd seen this place before but where?

A postcard? Yes - that was exactly where I'd seen this. I was in Greece… Rhodes? Lindos or something like that. It was one of those beach cities. But as far as I knew Earth only had one Moon, and it wasn't usually visible during the day.

A stick sailed over my head and into the ocean, followed soon after by three huge dogs panting heavily. Wait… not three dogs. One. One dog with three heads. One massive dog the size of a grizzly bear. One massive dog who I'd known the name of since I was eleven.

"Cerberus," I spoke the word almost fearfully. "That's Cerberus. That's the dog that guards the Gates to Hades."

"Not today." Replied a man with a thick Greek accent. "Today he is the dog that plays fetch in the ocean. One cannot always work or one goes mad."

"So that would make you Hades then, I assume?" I looked back at the man who'd thrown the stick. He was a pale man, tall and lean with a thick black beard and more jewelry than I would generally expect a man to wear. He was wearing cargo shorts and a dark black polo-shirt with set of scales sewn where I would normally expect the horse to be. Dark sunglasses concealed his eyes, but I could see the edges where black motes of shadow just peeked out.

"I am he." Replied the God of Death as he knelt down to a plastic cooler next to a folding chair. He rooted around in the ice before offering me a bottle. "Beer?"

"Uh… sure." I took the bottle and grinned in excitement. "Wait… is this from MacAnallys?"

"I thought that a taste of home would be a welcome change." Hades knelt down in the sand to take the stick from his dog. He nuzzled the dog's heads, scratching them furiously as he made silly noises at them before standing up and flinging the stick as far as he could. "I am familiar with the difficulty of being unable to always indulge in the comforts of home."

I almost choked on my beer. I coughed a couple times, wiping at my lips with the back of my hand. "Does everyone know?"

"Did you think that the other psychopomps were not going to research their new contemporary?" Hades flipped his glasses up, exposing eyes like endless pits of shadow. "I have access to the dead, Dresden. I learn their truths. You will too… in time."

"I… I don't know how to do this." I admitted. "All of this, the God thing. I don't know what I'm doing."

"Clearly." Hades snorted. "Fortunately for you Anubis was a fan of rampant bureaucracy, so your neglect of your afterlife has not caused significant damage without you since you elected to claim it. I have been able to mitigate the complications thus far but you need a more formal education."

"Sorry, are you offering to teach me how to be a god?" My heart pounded in my ears. Hells Bells, Hades had been a god since before the Folly. He might actually be able to teach me how to do this.

"I am definitely considering it." Hades flopped down on the folding chair and sipped from his beer as he watched Cerberus frolicking in the foam. "But I would not be able to do so without tying you to my pantheon. And I am… unable to authorize that. Under normal circumstance, perhaps, but you are at war with too many nations. If I tied you to us you would bring your wars with you. So, for now, I cannot but others might."

"Who would be?" I asked, already suspecting the answer. Hades might be the god who got out of the folly with his powers intact but he wasn't the King of the Gods.

"Zeus - for me to teach you'll have to win his favor." Hades took the stick and tossed it again, narrowly missing getting a tail across the face for his trouble. He smiled at the antics of his pup. "Fortunately for you, circumstances have provided you with the perfect opportunity."

"Oh," I asked, taking another swig of Mac's excellent beer.

Hades replied, "Someone killed Zeus at the Olympics."

"I'm seeing a problem with this plan." I replied glibly, taking the stick when Cerberus offered it and tossing it into the sea after scratching him behind one set of ears.

"Hardly. The memories of the Goa'uld are genetic. My brother had a contingency in place so that if he died, a cloned body of his symbiote and host would immediately be decanted from a secret facility." Hades shrugged. "I could have interrogated his shade to find out how he died, but the process he uses prevents their existence. I can only interrogate the dead while they are dead."

"And I'm guessing the backup only has as many memories as the last time old Mr. Lightning bolts backed up his DNA… so New Zeus doesn't remember what Old Zeus knew." I groaned. "You want me to solve the murder of a god?"

"And prove it wasn't my other brother who did it." Hades replied. "Poseidon went missing at the same time Zeus was found dead. He is currently a suspect in my brother's death yesterday."

"What makes you so sure he didn't do it?" I finished my beer and put it in the cardboard box of empty bottles. "Wasn't he second in line for being King of the Gods."

"Poseidon didn't give a damn about anything above the coast line." Hades scoffed. "Trust me, if you knew my brother you wouldn't bother asking. He was far to occupied keeping what was his to worry about taking what belongs to someone else. I've taken the liberty of telling Zeus to expect your aid."

"I can't go back to Earth, Hades." I shook my head. "Not that I don't want to go to the Olympics."

Hades burst out laughing, pulling a thick invitation from his pocket. "No, Dresden, the real Olympics. Not the mortal imitation of them. You're going to the true Olympic games."

I took the Envelope, cracking the seal and skimming it's contents - notably the date in Goa'uld standard. "This was written a week ago. Long before the murder."

"It was. My brother was just tickled that you were at war with the Titans." Hades smiled, apparently realizing my line of thought. "Ah… of course. You're wondering if I killed my own brothers and have arranged for an investigator to ward of suspicion given that I'm sending you for this purpose."

"It had occurred to me, yes." I replied firmly. "Given that you're third in line."

"Then let me resolve your fears." Hades stood up. "I can't rule."

"Why?" I asked.

"I'm a Psychopomp, Dresden. I have always been among the dead. I am not even able to be among them except for short bursts without risking something going wrong, in my doman. Even this conversation is longer than I would care to spend away from my realm." Hades brushed the sand from his legs before whistling for his dog to come. Cerberus came in an instant, blurring into shadow before appearing next to Hades. "I am not guilty of fratricide."

I can't say exactly why, but I believed him. "Is there a time limit to this?"

"I hardly think that's necessary." Hades snorted. "Once it becomes apparent that you're trying to solve this murder you'll find the killer out of pure self-interest. They will very much want you dead."

"And if I solve this murder, what do I get. Lessons in how to be a god and the armies of Winter helping me finish the wars I'm fighting?" I pocketed the invitation.

"The wars you're already fighting, yes." Hades chuckled. "Don't consider this a blank check to start more wars."

"Why?" I scratched the back of my head. "Why are you doing this?"

"Other than needing someone to solve my brothers murder and the Winter Queen recommending you as an excellent Private Investigator?" Hades smiled. "Dresden, how familiar are you with my legends?

"Enough to know how wrong Disney got them." I shrugged, "You aren't a devil, you're more of a caretaker in the legends."

"I'm a judge of character, Harry." Hades took another beer from the cooler and tossed it to me. "More than that can wait till you've proved yours. Now, take that with you, Harry. You've got a lot of work to do."

I pulled off the bottle top as I walked back through Lea's still open Way.

Harry Dresden, Pantheon P.I.

I should get business cards.


	2. Chapter 2

I reappeared in my bedroom with a shuddering gust of frost before the way closed behind me, yelping in surprise as I felt the Winter Lady smacked my backside as I went. What? It's not like silk pants provide much in the way of protection, even with a wool cloak. I'm not used to people grabbing my backside. It was startling.

Amun, at this point apparently immured to my strange comings and goings, only briefly looked up from the outrageous spread of food he forced upon me three times a day. He at least seemed to have acquiesced to my request that food animals have no greater than four legs and no fewer than two - though apparently the necessity of serving them without the head attached hadn't yet sunk in.

He busied himself with creating a pyramid from tropical fruit as he said, "You appear to have returned with your skin attached, Lord Warden. Is this a trend I can anticipate in future or shall I inform Lord Bob that he can forgo with the 'twinzies" song he does so love to sing upon your return?"

"No such luck, I'm afraid." I sighed, looking at the porcelain white of my skin in the mirror. One of the more irritating byproducts of my godhood was that when I tapped into the extra power that came from worship, it flensed the skin from my body. Not all at once, not unless I was using a lot of power, but even casual magic use would cause the skin to crack, sending spidery patterns of black starscape out across my face and body. It would regrow - it always did, but it required hours of sitting still and concentrating on what I was supposed to look like.

I'd disappeared from Nekheb dozens of times only to reappear in the throne room hours or days later as a skeleton wreathed in a black whirlwind of stars. After the third time I'd done it, my subjects just accepted it as "one of those things the Lord Warden does" and just incorporated into the scriptures that my clergy continued to write over my repeated protests that they cease.

I grabbed one of the round tarts off the table and popped it in my mouth. Food wasn't necessary any more but I did still enjoy the act of eating. It felt human. I chewed the tart several times as cracked open my invitation, reading over the elaborate Greek script as I sat down in the ornate chair at my table.

"What is that, Lord Warden?" Amun queried as he poured a generous measure of wine into a flagon.

"An invitation to the Olympics." I replied, skimming the letter. "I was invited by Hades."

There was a loud clatter on the floor as Amun dropped the pitcher, making no effort to clean the mess as he stared at me in open mouthed horror. "You can't possibly mean to go, Lord Warden. It is madness!"

I closed my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose as I asked. "Amun… this event isn't just going to have the Olympians at it, is it?"

"Every Goa'uld in the Galaxy of note will attend unless Zeus hasn't invited them to snub them. Heru'ur, Bast, Apophis, Olokun, Morrigan, and many, many others. There is a pledge of peace but that has never stopped there from being assassinations or mysterious disappearances. Zeus punishes any he catches breaking the peace but there is an entire planet hosting the celebrations and every enemy you've ever made staying as his guests." Amun paused to consider the matter. "Well… except Moloch. Zeus always found his misogyny distasteful."

Which told you about as much as anyone ever needed to know about Moloch. I stood up from my chair as Amun seemed to realize the mess he'd made, screeching in horror and picking up pieces of broken glass. "It's fine, Amun. Don't worry about it."

"No, Lord Warden. I will fix this… I, I shouldn't have questioned your will." Amun looked up at me in shame from where he knelt to pick up pieces of broken glass.

"Why? I'm doubting this more by the second." I sighed looking at the envelope. Was this a trap? I knew that the Winter Lady hadn't lied to me but I didn't know anything about Hades other than the fact that he had excellent taste in beer. Had he taken offense to my godhood? Sending me to solve a murder only to cause my own was exactly the sort of cruel ironic punishment he was famous for.

But… no, something about Hades told me that he was on the level. Not about everything, certainly, but the guy had been an ascended god since before the Bible. If he wanted to schwack me, he wouldn't need to wait to do it. Plus, Maeve owed me too much for me to believe that she'd willingly become a pawn in someone else's plot against me. That was the sort of personal insult against Winter that even a God would regret.

I didn't have much of a choice either way. I needed Mab's troops to help fight my war. If this was how I got them to keep fighting, I didn't have much choice. "I don't suppose you've been to the Olympics before?"

"No, Lord Warden." Amun looked up from putting the shattered glass fragments into a brass bowl. "Heka always declined the invitation. He felt it was too dangerous to go."

"Of course he did." I exhaled as the door to my room opened, pushed by a skeletal hand wrapped in thick linen wrappings painted with miniscule Hieroglyphic wards. The bones were not real but instead imitations of human bone carved from diorite, green black stone carved into human form. Well - except for the skull. The very human skull sat in the center of an Egyptian headdress, staring back at me with glowing orange eyes.

It was a combined construction of interwoven Goa'uld technology and elaborate sorcery that had been built in secret by the Scribes of Nekheb, using the forbidden texts of Heka to make a powerful body for an already powerful being. I greeted it with an idle wave of my hand, "Morning' Bob."

"Morning, Boss." Bob the Mummy replied cheerily

Bob the mummy had implanted himself into the body with the help of his human followers, allowing him to assist SG-1 in their their defense of Nekheb and subsequent assault on Kovak'so to recover their lost people. Given the utility of his newfound mobility, I'd grudgingly tolerated Bob's sudden autonomy. It wasn't like a lack of mobility had prevented Bob from mischief. His moon was too far gone down the smutty spirit's mental rabbit hole for me to even begin to figure out what to do the Cult of Bob.

And it was just kind of nice to have someone visiting me who didn't worship me. Bob's forcefield shimmered as he sat down next to me, the barrier that now prevented him from having someone touch him without my permission elevating him to hover a centimeter or so above the actual chair. Bob derived no more benefit from eating than I did but he seemed to enjoy the ritual of meeting me for meals now that he had the option of walking places. His eyes twinkled in amusement as he took the invitation I offered him, "What's up Boss? You've got that far off 'I'm about to burn half the galaxy by accident while solving a problem' look in your eye pits."

"We've got a job." I replied to the Spirit of Intellect.

"Something pointless, impossible, and borderline suicidal, I assume." Bob commented as his eyes flitted back and forth over the Greek script.

"Probably." I agreed. "Zeus apparently needs someone to solve his murder."

"I'd have Hera as suspects one through fifty thousand, then maybe consider someone else if she's dead." Bob looked up over the invitation, tapping it in thought with his stone fingertips.

"Bob, if it were that obvious they wouldn't need to hire me." I leaned back in my chair. "And it's too early to draw conclusions."

"Conclusions on what, Lord Warden?" The god Enlil inquired as he walked into the room. The Babylonian god's beard was covered in golden ring and silver bells today, jingling merrily as he took his place at the table and started heaping food onto a plate.

"Who killed Zeus." Bob handed the invitation to Enlil.

The Babylonian god raised an manicured eyebrow covered in thick, black makeup as he skimmed the letter. He didn't look up from it as he said, "Hera, obviously. It wouldn't be the first time she killed him. Their marriage isn't exactly picturesque… though it would be the first time she didn't do it in public."

"Spurned lover is always a good motivation." I agreed. "But I'm reserving judgement until I have any evidence. At this point I haven't even seen the crime scene."

"Someone killed Zeus at the Olympics?" Enlil laughed bitterly. "That's either very brave or extremely foolish. The Old Customs rule the Olympics. If anyone gets caught spilling blood needlessly the whole of the System Lords will be turned against them."

"Does that stop anyone from actually doing it?" Bob inquired, playing with a fork between his stone fingers.

"Of course not." Enlil scoffed. "But they're generally not so gauche as to do it without removing the methods of resurrection - especially when we all know how pointless the exercise is. Everyone has a sarcophagus even if they don't have a method of self-cloning."

"Then why do it?" Bob leaned back in his chair. "I mean - they had to know that it wouldn't work."

"I'm not sure if it matters." I considered the matter. "It happened. So they either didn't know that it wouldn't work, didn't care that it didn't work, or they didn't need it to work. Apparently killing Zeus wipes his mind for however long since he last backed up his genetic memories, so maybe killing him wasn't the goal."

"I wouldn't discard the idea of killing him for the sheer fun of it." Enlil's face darkened. "There are enemies who will just do you harm for the joy of doing you harm."

"I don't have enough evidence to even start a theory of what happened." I shrugged. "And I don't know the cast of characters beyond their reputations."

"Luckily for you, you have associates who do." Enlil put down the letter and gave me a serious look as he steepled his ring covered fingers.

"Sorry, Enlil, I think I misheard you. Did you just volunteer to travel with me off Nekheb?" I blinked in surprise. Enlil rarely left the palace of Nekheb, let alone the city. I'd had to outright blackmail him to get him to go offworld the last time I'd needed his help.

"Obviously, child. You haven't got the remotest clue how to conduct yourself in a formal setting. I can't have your formal introduction to one of the greatest powers in the Galaxy be an embarrassment to the Pantheon you've formed. You will bring your sub-lords and you will conduct yourself like a King of Gods." Enlil shuddered briefly. "I don't want another repeat of the Moloch incident."

"Do you have an issue with me going to war with Moloch?" I replied bitterly.

"A war with the moron was inevitable, Moloch's entire economy relies on perpetual war. Nobody can fault you for fighting him. I have an issue with you letting him escape if your plan was to betray your promise of truce and execute him." Enlil popped a piece of fruit into his mouth and spoke as he chewed. "It's sloppy. Don't betray someone you can't kill outright. War is expensive and stupid if peace can be achieve with the stroke of a knife into your enemy's heartstrings"

Enlil's idea of diplomacy was to be polite right up to the moment when one could drive a knife into the back of one's competition. I had no doubt that he would kill me the instant he believed that he could do so without repercussion. But as long as I denied him that opportunity, his limited range of options made him a reliable subordinate. Unethical by any reasonable measurement of morality but he was unquestionably effective as an administrator. Especially effective since he'd hired his new secretary, an apparently mute woman who always wore a burka-like garment that covered her entire body.

She was terrified of me but I found her overt hatred of the Himmelites to be quite endearing.

I still wasn't sure what to do with an entire planet of Nazis but Enlil's strategy of keeping them too busy fighting Moloch to cause too much trouble was at least an effective stopgap until I came up with an actual plan more concrete than my immediate decree to ban the Swastika and appoint Jaffa supervisors to control and monitor the ruling government of Nekheb. I wasn't popular on Himmel but I also gave exactly zero fucks what a bunch of literal Nazis wanted.

"Fine, I could use the extra set of eyes." I sighed, "Especially with Ammit out of commission."

"I have no idea why she is indulging her host this much." Elil groused. "She's just holed up with the Hok'taur children in that monastery. What could possibly require that much secrecy?"

Enlil knew damn well that Ammit was teaching Wizards how to Wizard with the assistance of her host, Nanami. What they were doing was patently obvious. What Enlil was confused about was why I was keeping a small stable of Hok'taur but not distributing them to my underlings. Allowing a practitioner to develop into a Wizard was, in his mind, just begging for another magical rebellion against the gods.

The truth was that I couldn't send the apprentices back to Earth without risking paradox or telling the White Council more about Nekheb than I was willing to disclose till after the Darkhallow. I didn't know what deal Ammit struck with Nanami to convince her host to get the children to stay but given that there were still Brute Squad Wizards and apprentices time-locked in Buyan, I imagine Nanami was already inclined to stick close to her people. I was certain that Ammit wasn't forcing Nanami to stay. I'd soul Gazed the Eater of Souls. I knew her. That wasn't her style.

"I would suggest informing Ms. Mary that her services are required as well." Bob pointed to a line of Greek letters on the invitation. "It would be seen as a lethal insult for your coterie not to include some of your children."

I coughed violently as I attempted to drink wine, "I'm not bringing kids to this thing! You said it yourself, this tournament is lethal."

"The spirit is correct, Lord Warden." Enlil shook his head, jingling the bells in his beard. "We can mitigate the threat by bringing troops - we need to bring participants for the games anyway - but to show up without servants, clergy, and your pet humans would be a sign of fear. You cannot show the System Lords fear."

"I'm not putting those kids in danger." My eyes crackled with glowing embers of red lightning. "Period."

"Then don't." Enlil rolled his eyes exaggeratedly. "Have your entire honor guard protecting the children while you walk the streets of Olympus without a care. You're durable enough to make that viable and the political messaging comes off better. You don't need to bring the youngest and most vulnerable of them but you do need to pick at least three of them to bring with you."

"I'd listen to him, boss." Bob nodded, crossing his mummified arms and stroking the pointy, jewel encrusted imitation beard attached to the end of his jawbone. "You're at war. Zeus isn't. Your kids aren't going to be in more danger on Olympus under a pledge of peace than they are here under a guarantee of war."

"I am glad you agree with me." Enlil nodded once. "And you will of course bring the spirit as well."

"Ex-fucking-scuse me?" Bob squawked.

"One of us needs to stay on Nekheb to command our forces. It is too risky to have both the risen Lord Warden and Ammit's Hok'taur host offword at the same time. I must go because I am the only one in our leadership who has an understanding of protocol." He glared at Bob. "And you must go because your loyalty cannot be guaranteed once you're out of arm's reach of the Lord Warden."

Said pot to kettle.

"One time - I kinda, sorta, committed treason one time and you never let me live it down." Bob groused. "I came back."

"Because SG-1 doesn't understand that you aren't a person so they allowed you agency." Enlil glared at the spirit. "No, creature, you are too dangerous outside of the Warden's control. You nearly brought us all to ruin."

"Boss - this is crazy." Bob's eyes flitted back and forth. "You're not thinking of actually bringing me are you? Who will run the defenses of Nekheb."

"Traitor's Bane." I replied firmly. "Bob… Enlil is right. Too many people died last time."

"Bad guys." Bob groused. "Too many bad guys isn't exactly a valid metric."

"Enough, Bob." I shook my head. "You're coming."

"Crap." Bob let out a long sigh, an impressive act for someone without lungs. "I'll tell Ul'tak to get the fleet ready."

"Not just Ul'tak." I grinned wolfishly. "Enlil - this is the sort of thing where I want to make an entrance, right?"

Enlil's face grew pale, likely remembering the last time I'd elected to 'impress' back in Egypt. "It… is… what did you have in mind, Lord Warden?"

"Then let's plan to show off." I started running through options in my head, considering everything I'd have to do to put on just the right kind of show. "Bob, how far along are your minions on those new plans?"

"My lunatics are doing exactly what you asked them to do, Sahib." Bob raised his palm, allowing motes of orange light to coalesce into a holographic images that mirrored my specifications exactly. "The prototypes are performing as advertised. They should be ready for a test run."

"Send a runner to the Undercity," I laughed in wicked anticipation. "Tell One Eye we're ready."


	3. Chapter 3

GREETINGS, LORD WARDEN. Spoke the titanic creature as I entered its inner sanctum. I no longer cringed to be in the mere presence of Traitor's Bane but it's thunderous voice was always unnerving, mostly because it spoke into my mind rather than using words to speak to me. YOU ARE HERE TO HUMOR THE HUMANITY YOU MISTAKENLY BELIEVE TO BE OUR OWN?

"I just came to see the fleet, Bane." I replied to the creature as it rose from it's pool, the shifting mass of limbs and faces contorting it's body to face me. It didn't turn, rather it inverted it's body. It appeared as though a million women were scratching and clawing at its skin as its pink meat reshaped itself to face in the opposite direction from where it had previously been facing. I smiled at the Genius Loci as it made an attempt at human form, ignoring the irregularities of its body as arms and legs dangled from the parody of femininity in charge of Nekheb's defenses. "No reason not to be civil about it."

THIS DOES NOT REQUIRE PRESENCE, ONLY THE MIND. Traitor's Bane's thunderous speech gave me the indication that it was mildly disappointed at me, a multitude of eyes opening along the creature's flesh to stare at me blankly. Blue, green, hazel, and colors I'd never seen before all looking at me with glassy disinterest. YOU ARE HERE TO ASSUAGE GUILT NOT FOR KNOWLEDGE. KNOWLEDGE IS FREELY YOURS.

That… was more accurate than I wanted it to be. I could tap into the knowledge of the Genius Loci whenever I felt so inclined - at least while I was in the Star System of Nekheb. My spiritual binding with Traitor's Bane gave me insight into the limited intellectus it possessed. The spirit was monomaniacally focused on military matters but as long as I could frame a question in the context of what it understood to be a relevant concern to warfare, it would know the answer instantly.

I could easily gain the knowledge that I wanted anywhere on Nekheb but I felt obligated to visit the spirit regularly in what felt like an increasingly vain effort to find a way to fix Heka's mess. Heka, the deposed Egyptian God of Magic, had been a proper bastard. The clergy of Nekheb had been designed with a single purpose in mind, providing him with an unlimited pool of willing human sacrifices. He bound himself in flesh and spirit to women he raised from childhood to believe that their greatest possible honor was to be bound to Traitor's Bane in the afterlife. The creature was a combination of the souls of every "wife" of the Egyptian deity.

It was a violation of every law of morality, decency, and magic that I'd ever imagined. And he'd been doing it apparently daily for thousands of years. The spirit was powerful enough at this point that it didn't require daily sacrifices any more, but the built up momentum from centuries of excess sacrifices was beginning to wane. The magics binding it were starting to unravel, meaning that the single most important military Empire had effectively become a ticking time bomb.

I still wasn't entirely sure what would happen if the ritual was broken. If I was extremely lucky, I'd just have to deal with a fuckoff powerful spirit, a godlike being in its own right, that was no longer bound to my will. If I was unlucky it would explode - taking the entire star system with it. Fortunately I'd found an interim solution while I figured out a more permanent solution.

"Bane, I have nothing to feel guilty about." I sighed in disinterest, opening my mind up to the Genius Loci and pushing the belief of a million worshippers at the spirit for it to feed upon. I poured the good will and needs of Nekheb towards Traitor's Bane, letting the creature feed upon my power. "Heka was the one sacrificing women to make you, not me."

PRECISELY. Intoned the Genius Loci as it tapped into my mind. YOU USE THE POWER OF BELIEF TO AVOID THE INEVITABLE.

I managed not to lose my temper with construct, but it was a close call. It was not Traitor's Bane's fault for not understanding how I couldn't sacrifice another woman to it. The construct was amoral. It only understood that I had been substituting massive portions of the belief that I gained from my followers to en lieu of the ritual sacrifices used by Heka.

It only understood that the process was working less and less the more I used it. Eventually there would come a day where my substitution of belief for a sacrifice wouldn't work at all. It wasn't that I didn't understand the process. Heka had been infuriatingly complete in his notes. It just had never even begun to cross that bastard's mind to use anything other than human sacrifice in the process. I couldn't even substitute animal sacrifices.

"I'm not sacrificing another woman to you." I snarled. "Never again - we will find another way."

EVEN THE DIVINE EVENTUALLY FAIL. Traitor's Bane almost sounded disappointed as it moved the joints of its arm in a way that I would charitably describe as "wrong." It split open down the middle, revealing the interlocking arms of a dozen women that wove webs of light together with their fingers to create a tapestry of illusionary light, showing me the shipyard above Nekheb.

The starship manufacturing facility that SG-1 had accidentally allowed Bob to steal hung in orbit of the planet nearest to Nekheb's yellow star, called the Eye of Ra by its people. It was a massive facility constructed by Ptah before the fall, an autonomous ship construction facility that fed upon dead worlds to create entire fleets. I supposed that as frustrated as the Airforce must be not to control it, they had to vastly prefer it be in the hands of me rather than Apophis. It was damn lucky that I had it too - the unexpected five way battle had depleted a significant portion of my fleet.

So I'd made a new one. One that fit the esthetics favored by the religion I'd accidentally made.

My inner seven-year-old did the snoopy dance of Joy as I looked at the hologram that showed me a section within the void of space, demonstrating my teenage dreams brought to life. I hummed the Imperial March to myself as I watched goa'uld gate ships flying in formation around the dagger-like wedges moving through the increasingly large graveyard of defeated ships in orbit of Nekheb prime.

Yeah, I know that Star Destroyers are what the bad guys fly but there are limitations to Goa'uld ship design. Goa'uld ships are pyramids for a reason more complex than just being able to land on the ground based temples. Basic geometric shapes have their own significance and the Goa'uld had spent millennia honing the ritual magic of tactically applied mathematics in lieu of more powerful sorceries.

Bob and I are clever - but neither one of us is a rocket scientist. We could tinker with the existing ship designs, but we were ultimately limited by the geometric designs left behind by Ptah. Not that there was a shortage to choose from, mind you. That crazy bastard put together stuff so bizarre and dangerous that it belonged on the "evil mastermind hall of fame" for bad ideas that were technically possible. And, given that I wasn't limited by the arms treaties of the System Lords, I was glad to use what they couldn't. I mean, what were they going to do? Try to double murder me? I was already on the System Lord naughty stool, so get creative or get dead.

And while I couldn't invent entirely new machines, what I could do was play around with how much and where ritual magic needed to be applied in those designs to tweak the size and shape of those basic geometric patterns. Ptah might have been a genius when it came to technology, but his understanding of magic left a lot to be desired.

After three years of studying the forbidden scrolls of the Goa'uld in Heka's library I'd come to one inevitable conclusion. Even as gods, the Goa'uld had been garbage at magic. They had been able to re-shape the heavens and re-order the universe to their liking, but they'd never actually learned to do the basics properly. It seemed like once they figured out a fast-track to godhood through the Ritual of Necromantic Ascension, they'd just brute-forced their way past having to learn how to use the power of their host bodies. If you don't understand the fundamentals you're just going to apply bad habits to the more advanced techniques.

Consequently, Goa'uld magic - while unquestionably effective - was absurdly wasteful. They never used three wards when fifty could do almost the same job, then just attached them to a generator powerful enough to power two hundred wards, just in case. It was just generally sloppy work.

Once I'd cut out the chaff, it let me manipulate the wards and spellwork within the design. And when it comes to magic, I was hell on wheels even before I got a god-sized boost of belief behind my work. And once Bob and I realized that we could make an idea of mine work, there was no way we weren't going to actually do it. They weren't exact copies of Lucas' masterpieces, but even with the complex flowering pattern of struts favored by the Goa'uld they were unmistakable for anything other a Star Destroyer to anyone who'd seen the movies. They weren't combat tested yet but I was confident that they'd preform to specification.

Plus, it kinda helped with the whole esthetic that the Gate Ships were already shaped more or less like a TIE fighter. The addition of extra weapons and shields made the already deadly spacecraft even more lethal. They were massively more expensive to produce than a standard glider but they'd outperform their peers on a logarithmic scale.

The "Imperial Fleet of Nekheb" was only one of several major upgrades I'd made to my armies that were… lets call it "inspired" by other sources. Sure, George Lucas' lawyers were going to have a shit-fit when I got back to Earth but I was willing to bet that "planetary bombardment capability" trumped "IP lawyers." I looked up into the faces of Traitor's Bane. "Is there anything wrong with them? Anything that would prevent us from launching?"

Traitor's Bane looked at me incredulously as though to say "No, but you bloody well know that because you know everything I know." It replied in near exasperation. NO.

"Cool - well, watch over the house while Bob and I are gone. If anyone invades, just give Ammit a shout so that she can coordinate defenses." I nodded to the spirit and left the room.

I KNOW MY PURPOSE. The spirit replied, descending into its bloody pool at the center of the room. DO NOT FORGET THINE

I walked out of the inner sanctum and out into the Great Library, closing the massive doors behind me. The Great Library of Nekheb was teeming with life. The hundreds of scribes in my service were scurrying about the books and scrolls of the library, industriously studying the various projects and requests required of them in support of my war effort. Planning a war required intense research of the terrain and peoples of a planet. Scouts were useful, but even they required some indications for where they ought to be searching.

At the center of the hubbub of people was a single woman, clad in nearly nothing, kneeling upon the hard ground. My High Priestess, Muminah. She sat, motionless, waiting for me as the scribes scurried around her in an academic frenzy.

Muminah rose from where she'd been kneeling to wait for me, standing gracefully in a single, supine motion. Muminah, High Priestess of Nekheb, was a creature of pure grace and devotion. She was also one of the few humans who I could really call a friend.

Muminah had been in my service since the first day of my godhood. She had been at my side through wars and horrors that few beings could imagine, including the battle against Koschei - scion of Winter. Her worship of me was uncomfortable, but I'd increasingly come to rely on her advice and companionship since Ammit had exiled herself to the desert.

She was nearly unrecognizable from when I met her. The fumbling girl who'd climbed into my bed expecting to die seemed like an entirely different woman. The woman in front of me was confident, comfortable in her own skin. Her deference to me was formal but casual. She obeyed me and followed me because she sincerely believed it was the right thing to do rather than out of fear that I might smite her.

"Are we done talking to the spirit as though it were human, Lord Warden?" Muminah brushed off the front of the simple silk robe she now wore. It was a sheer silken garment, vaguely reminiscent of Jedi robes - though suffering from a distinct case of pornification ala Bob. "Or would you care to have a conversation with the statues as well? I'm sure it would be as productive."

My lips quirked up in amusement. Muminah wasn't great at snark yet, but that she was learning. "Not the wall? I'd have thought we should do the wall as well."

"We'd be here forever, Milord. You'd be talking to them until the hieroglyphs changed their wording." She crossed her arms over her chest in a way that made her various piercings glimmer through the sheer garment. "Not that I doubt you'd find a way to do it, Lord Warden, but I believe we are on a schedule today."

"Enough Muminah, I get it." I ruffled the woman's hair affectionately, earning a delighted giggle from the woman as she moved in a twisting motion away from me. Her martial arts training allowed her to wriggle like an eel, suddenly being farther than my fingers could reach.

She beamed her smile at me, pushing her long locks away from her face. She'd grown her hair into a near shoulder-length mohawk that she let hang to one side, exposing the bare flesh and tattoos along her scalp. It was scattered across her back, a silky stream of raven locks against carmel flesh. She still wasn't used to the sensation of hair at all, so it didn't take much to have her giggling like mad. "Stop that, Lord Warden or I'll have the Lady Ammit scold you again."

"By all means. I'd be glad just to see her." I smiled sadly.

"She is busy with her charges as you are busy with your duties." Muminah bobbed on the balls of her feet, stretching out after having been kneeling for a prolonged time. "Your own rebirth took you at least a year to grow accustomed."

"Can this discussion please happen elsewhere?" Cracked the harsh voice of a ShaRw, the head librarian. He was a formidable man in spite of his slight form. He was surprisingly young for a man of his status, but most of the older and more feeble scribes had been eaten by hydras two years ago. "You are disrupting the order of the library."

I actually laughed at the disgusted look on Muminah's face in response to someone so impertinent as to interrupt the "Lord Warden" in conference with his High Priestess. He could have pissed on the ground and it would have gotten the same response from her. She didn't argue with the man though. Though she found it contrary to all reason, she knew that I liked the man's abruptness.

ShaRw considered the Library to be his in all but law, and ruled his domain with an iron fist. Gods and mortals alike were guests within his domain and he wouldn't allow any man or beast to disrupt the simple order of his kingdom. He was exactly what I wanted in a librarian presiding over the most dangerous spells I'd ever seen. I'd seen him use the Library's defenses to beat eldritch beings to death with massive stone constructs without so much as batting an eyelash at the threat to his own life. Sure, he was a dick, but he'd burn the library to ash before he let a single scroll leave without his permission.

I don't know if Daniel Jackson's ego would ever quite recover from his incident with the Head Librarian.

"ShaRw, do you have what I asked for?" I smiled at the sullen man, brushing off his refreshing rudeness.

"Of course, Lord Warden." The Librarian pulled a tome from the table next to him. "We've managed to translate some of it, but we're still in the early stages of understanding the language. I am quite curious how you got the basics of grammar and syntax for the Gate Builders."

"I had a good teacher." I replied, flipping through the book's pages. It was definitely what I'd asked for, a basic guide to not accidentally getting everyone on Buyan killed. It contained a phrase book of important words in the language of the Gate Builders, a map of as much of Buyan as we'd been able to explore thus far, and a historical account of Ghouls and how to kill them if necessary. It also included basic guidelines like "don't press the button if you don't know what it does," "never open a door you haven't been explicitly told to open," and "The Lord Warden regenerates after exploding, you don't."

To be honest it was largely just a mix of common sense and tropes from movies I'd watched about traveling in space, but I figured Ridley Scott's characters were as good a place to start with how not to deal with a spaceship infested with dangerous monsters - Sigourney Weaver notwithstanding. "Good… this will do. Make sure there are enough copies for every team on Buyan and make sure they all read it and commit it to memory. That place is dangerous enough without having people touch things they shouldn't."

"Obviously." ShaRw shuddered visibly. "The scribes are translating as much as we dare but it is slow going. We're at least six months from being prepared for any expeditions into the city's interior beyond what you've already explored. Even then, I will not touch that place without Unas bodyguards."

"Understandable." I agreed. The native Ghouls of Buyan's predatory instincts naturally drew them to hunger for the flesh of Jaffa and Humans, but they avoided Unas like the plague. Not only were Unas warriors larger and stronger than most Ghouls, their flesh was apparently unpalatable to them. "We can mount an expedition when I get back, until then -"

"Touch nothing or we all die horribly in a screaming mess of fire and monsters." ShaRw replied dryly. "I assure you, Lord Warden, none of us are inclined to enter a place that you're taking this degree of caution in entering. At least, now without your presence. There are wars you've taken less precaution in planning."

I don't quite know if that spoke highly of my planning for Buyan or poorly of my war efforts. I handed the book back to the Librarian and walked to a ring-teleporter with Muminah. She waited till we were out of earshot to say. "You should not tolerate that man's rudeness."

"Muminah, I don't need him polite. I need him effective." I continued our argument for the umpteeth time. "He's doing what I need."

I half listened to Muminah's reply about "deference" and "reverence" being important in even the leadership of Nekheb and between equals as I fidgeted with my wrist computer. Three years of having access to advanced computing devices was enough for me to have gone from incompetently foundering with the keyboard to reflexively toggling runes along its surface without even really needing to look at them. My fingers danced along the hieroglyphs, selecting a specific destination for our ring teleporter rather than sending us to the nearest set of rings.

There was a woosh of air and a brilliant pillar of light that formed around us before we were deposited halfway across the Star System, into the primary exterior ring room of the flagship of my new fleet. As the light left my eyes I was greeted by two massive, armored figures. Jaffa of One-Eye's brood wearing the new armor I'd designed for them. It was segmented into smaller plates of naquadah enhanced steel spread out over segmented plates of heat reducing ceramic materials. It looked about halfway between the old Jaffa armor and something a Samurai might have worn with the addition of two cylindrical canisters on their wrists.

I hadn't been able to create a lightsaber for myself, in spite of my desire to do so. Creating a self-contained forcefield of plasma was possible but the excess heat it created was too much for any Jaffa or human to handle. An Unas, however, could comfortably have a pair of meter long plasma blades attached to each arm without even noticing the change in temperature. Paired with some basic shielding technology to ward them against ranged attacks, and Unas became as effective a shock troop as one could hope to have.

The pair of shock troops let out a hissing noise that was replied to by other Unas down the hall - a call and reply to let the Jaffa manning a heavy plasma turret down the corridor not to start shooting. I paid the guards no mind as I strode past them, walking past an additional four guarded choke points to get out into the hallway. It was probably overkill, but I didn't like the idea of being boarded the way that I'd boarded Chronos' ships two years ago.

Jaffa wearing the upgraded armor Bob and I designed were wandering the halls. They weren't exact copies of the Unas but they were similar enough that nobody would mistake them for anyone else's Jaffa. Visually separating the armies of Hell had become a problem that I would no longer tolerate. The Jaffa did not have the personal shielding devices that were incorporated into the Unas armor, devices small enough to fit into a Jaffa's suit of armor were too expensive to mass produce for that many soldiers. The new armor, however, included a pair of wrist mounted plasma weapons - effectively the same devices that were inside of staff weapons. Their charge could only be measured in days rather than centuries but it allowed his Jaffa to two more weapons than any other Jaffa on the battlefield. Additionally, their staff weapons now included a bladed tip like a Kopesh rather than the bulbous flowering bud that they'd previously wielded.

I blinked in brief surprise, regarding a Jaffa warrior who walked past me in bright green armor with a logo of Kermit the Frog painted on his pauldron and a broadsword rather than a staff weapon but decided against asking why he'd chosen those colors. Bob would likely know and I tried not to look like I had no idea what was going on in front of my Jaffa.

I watched him depart, Jaffa and Unas alike giving the man a wide berth as he passed. A wider bert, I noted, than they afforded me. I shrugged, writing it off as just another oddity of life in space, and continued to traverse my new flagship. It teemed with life, it's newly minted wards throbbing with the fully empowered wards of a starship designed from the ground up to be impervious to magical incursion. I ran my fingers along the walls as I walked, marveling at my own work. Two years ago, completing the ritual to activate a Goa'uld starship's worth of Wards would have seemed impossible to me. Even considering the task would have seemed insurmountable. Now? It just felt mundane.

The ritual seemed so obvious to me that it seemed equally alien to me that I'd think it beyond myself. I don't think the Harry from two years ago would even recognize the Harry from today. I hope he'd still like him though.

I walked for an hour to reach the bridge, passing thousands upon thousands of Jaffa and Unas. There were humans as well but they were few and far between. I greeted them as I went, returning salutes and talking with those few Jaffa that felt brave enough to and those fewer Unas who felt it necessary. By the time I reached the bridge my jaw was exhausted from greeting people.

Muminah spit away from me midway through the trip, heading for the Unas Enclave. Doubtless she had business with One Eye and his people. I was glad for a moment to myself, franky. They were few and far between lately. I'd be overrun with members of my household shortly. Bob was running interference on the orphans and priestesses, telling them the story of some movie or another in my private quarters but once Grayson and his siblings realized I was here, they'd be attached to my hip.

Bless them, but every once in a while I just needed some "me" time, you know?

Ul'tak and Enlil were already on the bridge, apparently animatedly talking with each other. That alone was troubling. Ul'tak and Enlil were not amicable. They weren't enemies by any measure but any time I saw the two of them aggressively agreeing with each other I knew I had an imminent headache coming my way.

"Do I even want to know?" I asked cautiously as Amun seemingly appeared from thin air with a sandwich. I knew that he hadn't actually teleported - he just used the hidden servant's corridor - but that man had a preternatural capability for being at my side with food.

"No." Both of them replied, neither of them looking up from the display they were focused upon.

"Well, tell me anyway." I replied, taking the sandwich from Amun and biting into it. I blinked in confusion, looking at Amun and saying. "This is a peanut butter sandwich."

"Yes, Lord Warden." Amun replied. "You mentioned that you were craving it last week."

"Where did you get peanut butter?" I bit into the sandwich again, speaking around a mouthful of peanut-buttery goodness.

"The Market." Amun replied, turning on his heel and through the curtains as though the answers were obvious. "From a trader."

I continued to chew on the sandwich, confused by just how familiar the taste of it was. If I didn't know better, I would have said this came from a supermarket back in Chicago. But I'd learned not to question Amun's resourcefulness. If I told him I wanted him to pluck the moon from the sky he'd fetch a rope and lasso the thing somehow. I returned my attention to my First Prime and Enlil. "So - what new hell have you two found?"

"Chronos is dead." Ul'tak gestured to a map of the galaxy with little lights to indicate troop movements along the borders of my territories and those of my enemies. "We know that without a doubt. It was confirmed through our spies after the Winter Lady revealed it to you. SG-1 slew them with the aid of identical copies of themselves."

"With… what?" I stopped chewing on my sandwich.

"Clones, more than likely." Enlil shrugged. "It's not a common method of warfare but not unheard of in warfare. The Tau'ri have an annoying tendency to use decommissioned technology without checking why the System Lords forbade its use."

The Babylonian god looked out the window as gate ships zipped past it. "Though I suppose we're hardly one to judge."

"Indeed." My First Prime chuckled. "But that's hardly germain to our problem."

Enlil tugged at his manicured beard with jeweled fingers. "Unfortunately, the Jaffa is correct. Chronos death is irrelevant to our problem, which is exactly why we have a problem. The armies of Chronos haven't stopped fighting. They haven't slowed down. Their strategies haven't changed. None of them are offering to surrender or ally themselves with other gods."

"Oh… Crap." I sighed. "I was right, wasn't I?"

"So it would seem." Enlil replied, his expression utterly murderous. "Chronos was merely the mouthpiece for whomever was truly directing his campaign."

Chronos, Titan and king of the deposed lords of Olympus, had repeatedly demonstrated access to technology and the loyalty of beings that - by all rights - should have opposed him entirely. One did not just find a freaking Shoggoth. Not without some serious mojo and some freaking scary patrons. It was possible that he'd just offered conditional parol to some of the more dangerous beings in his jail cells but I'd been increasingly worried that Chronos wasn't actually orchestrating his war. If this had been a pure war over territory, Chronos would have sued for peace a year ago so that he could ally with me to spit the holdings of Moloch before Apophis managed to take too many strategic resources from conquered worlds.

"Hells bells - I do not need this." My head was throbbing. I'd been suffering from a series of increasingly painful migraines lately, brought on by stress no doubt. The thought of some nameless big bad lurking in the shadows had my head throbbing as though it were fit to bursting. "Do we have any good news?"

"Only that someone is assaulting the smaller Goa'uld lords currently in disfavor with the System Lords." Ul'tak shrugged. "We're not sure who they are, yet, but they've got good taste in enemies. They seem to be raiding, taking strategic resources, and disappearing without leaving behind indications as to their allegiance. It's forcing the major powers to devote their resources to anti-piracy operations which makes attacking us a less appealing prospect for them."

"The good news is rampant piracy?" I snorted.

"Well firstly, they're not raiding us or things that belong to us. Second, an enemy of mine for thousands of years is dead. Finally, we are heading to the first social event to which I've been invited since the fall of the First World." Enlil scratched the back of his head. "So yes. I would call this a day of good news."

"I'll take it." I shrugged. "Ul'tak, we good to go on a field trip buddy?"

"As you command, Lord Warden." The Jaffa saluted me, placing his fist across the heart of his newly minted Jaffa armor.

"Ok Chewie." I grinned at my General. "Order the jump to lightspeed."


End file.
